The present invention relates to improvements to squeezable drink containers, and more particularly, to an adapter attached to the top of the drink container for spacing a user's mouth from the drink container outlet for overcoming possible health problems which may be caused by the unsanitary practice of sharing the drink container by several users, for instance, sports team, or the like.
Squeezable drink containers such as, for instance, Gatorade.RTM., are frequently used by several people such as a sports team. Each person drinks from the same drink container by placing his or her mouth to the outlet of the drink container and squeezing the latter. It is understood that this is an unsanitary practice to share the same drink container by several people if a direct contact between the drink container outlet and the user's mouth takes place during drinking, and this practice may cause health problems.
It is known in the art to attach a drinking cup to the top of a beverage container.
For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 2,778,521 describes a closure cap attached to the neck of the liquid cooling container and having a valve facilitating filling the container and dispensing the liquid therefrom.
In U.S. Pat. No. 2,729,956, a cup-like element is removably and telescopically attached to a cylindrical can with a beverage to facilitate drinking directly from the can.
Bottle top drinking cups are also described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,582,934, 3,021,977 and 4,872,569. The drinking cup is readily detached from the respective bottle after performance of its functions, and if desired, is replaced by another drinking cup.
All these drinking cups serve, in some degree, for better sanitary purposes, since after replacing the used drinking cup by a clean one, the next user is not subjected to the influence bacteria, infectious viruses and germs of a previous user. However, the main intention of the above cups is to serve as an outlet of the drinking vessel (bottle or can) which is shaped conveniently for the user to drink the beverage directly from the bottle or the can without dispensing the beverage into a separate glass or a cup.
Disadvantageously, to be protected from transmission of various bacteria, viruses and germs, the users sharing the same beverage container should have handy a plurality of disposable aforesaid drinking cups, that is, at least, not conveniently available for immediate use.
Besides, if shared by sport teammates during the rest time, or during time when the player is substituted by another one and has to be refreshed, it is clear that hardly anyone of these people will spend any time or effort for replacing disposable drinking cups. They simply pass the beverage container from one person to another for consumption, and the problem remains unsolved.
Therefore, it would be highly desirable to have more convenient means to overcome possible negative sequences of the same beverage container shared by several people.